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User talk:Caerold
Welcome Hi, welcome to ! Thanks for your edit to the File:Unseen.png page. Please leave a message on my talk page if I can help with anything! Malacodor (talk) 19:28, November 26, 2013 (UTC) Stats? This all talking on wikia is confusing - I honestly preffer using the coments than this system. And, BTW, I don't know what happen to your comment, number of replies should be unlimited. It shows at the bottom of the page that there are 6 comments on the page, but on the upper part, near the edit button, it says there are 9... Don't get this. Anyway, anything can be in the infoboxes - Malacodor is the one who coded them, so if there is a need for other stats, he can put them there as well, I guess :D And the reason I would be hesistant to placing damage multiplyers out in the open, it's because they are parts of the game's whole inner mechanics of combat and damage. It is kind of complicated and might be hard to explain is easy to understand manner. Alos, I personally don't like the idea of wiki showing all the under-the-hood workings and equasions of the game. Lore, data on content, all the in-game numbers are OK, the things one needs to find in the game code, should stay in the code... Kaaven (talk) 04:28, December 22, 2013 (UTC) Yeah, I'm not sure the proper way to have the conversation either. I'm used to the pages I read on wikipedia having a tabbed comments page, not forum-like posts below the original entry. Yeah, I can't figure out what happened to my 2 comments from earlier, which is why I asked. As I said, I am equally hesitant regarding posting damage numbers, especially since (1) we don't know exactly how the wound system works and (2) the numbers can change during development. I found a lot of info in the database dump where I was looking for weapon degradation and range stats, including info about morale and action success weights. The terms D uses in his mouseovers are maddeningly vague, but I can understand how the learning curve can contribute to an enjoyable game experience. In my original replies I listed the ranges for long range weapons (posting again here for later reference) and speculated a bit on how the bows' range and penetration might have an effect on damage. I didn't go any further, I just speculated on whether we'd want any more on the wiki. 95 scoped rifle 80 rifle 40 compound bow 30 shotgun, greenwood bow 25 slung pebble 20 slung stone Caerold (talk) 05:24, December 22, 2013 (UTC) Recipes/Weapons Your edits to the "Recipe" and the "Property items" templates seem to be correct. However, I undid your change of the links to the "String and Twine" pages. When I wrote the template I planned to merge both pages, but I forgot about it. Now they are merged. You mentioned having problems understanding Recipe/doc, could you please explain this in more detail? What do you think of presenting damage and accuracy values as "medium", "above average", "high", "very high" and so on? Players don't need numbers, but they want to know which weapon is better. Malacodor (talk) 18:41, December 23, 2013 (UTC) Thanks for checking my work. Yeah, I spent most of the day learning how to edit a wiki and specifically how our templates work. The interaction between properties and recipes isn't obvious, and the lack of a doc for properties doesn't help. I did learn quite a bit after reading (and rereading and rerereading) the recipes doc. I'm glad I didn't mess anything up. For the string changes, I'd assumed they came from a merged page being split. 50-50 chance on that guess. I'll check what you did today and see if that fixed my problem. Accuracy seems to be linked more to skills and conditions in combat than the weapons themselves, so I don't think I can add that. With more research I might be able to add some detail to the combatMoves section... eventually. A conditions page with info about Vunerable, Stunned, hypothermia, etc might be more constructive. Damage is based on weapon type, though, and modified afterward, so we can present some info on that. The game gives numbers that scale from 0.1 to 1.6 and lists both cutting and blunt damage factors for each weapon. The totals for the standard weapons range from 0.4 (glass shard) to 2.6 (shotgun). I'll try and work out a system for classifying them into groups that make sense and match the categories D uses for combat moves and wound descriptions. Fortunately the combat moves trip, lure, kick, headbut and pullDown point to conditions inflicted on the target like MinorCuts, MinorBruising, ModerateCuts and ModerateBruising. These seem to use the same damage scale numbers the weapons do, so I have a rough guide to what D means when he says that. Caerold (talk) 22:45, December 23, 2013 (UTC) In the meantime I wrote a doc for "Property Items" and made a few changes to Recipe/Doc. I still remember when Dan decided to implement the property system, and I realized how much work this decision would cause for the wiki... However, it was an interesting learning experience to get all the templates up and running. Respect for learning much of all this in a single day. I'd say forget about accuracy, at least for now. Malacodor (talk) 02:11, December 24, 2013 (UTC) Agreed regarding accuracy. It's a can of worms I'm not eager to go into. Yeah, thanks. I bet it was hard to work out how to create the current system! A bit of a learning curve for me for sure. I just spent three hours editing the properties template, fixing alphabetization, capitalization (before I knew capitalization didn't matter), punctuation and such to match the text used to ingame recipes. I properly marked the old properties deprecated so nothing should have broken (I checked). I started a big update to the "Item Properties" article this morning and found out I needed to go further down the rabbit hole into the template to actually fix stuff. I love the way crafting works in NS. Even moreso now that I've had a chance to dive into the database and work out how his code much handle it. The way stuff is handled on the wiki isn't *quite* as extensible, but it's actually VERY similar. Once you get used to it it's really quite elegant. Caerold (talk) 02:46, December 24, 2013 (UTC) Thanks for all your work on the properties page, but you shouldn't have taken over all the punctuation errors from the game, since they'll probably be fixed. I should have mentioned that, but I underestimated your motivation. I modified the "Property items" template to filter out commas, so punctuation errors can't break things anymore. The "Item Properties" page should only contain properties required for recipes. Malacodor (talk) 14:55, December 24, 2013 (UTC) Yeah, I like the no commas version better anyway. I was originally trying to fix the errors on the Item Properties page (and later the properties template once I discovered that) but found out I couldn't just dump revised data in from a diff of the xml because lots of the wiki's "properties" had different names. Actually, those aren't really the properties the game uses. They're "ingredients" which are strings D manually created and displayed to represent groups of actual item "properties" that the game assigns to items. "Recipes" have a list of required "ingredients" and D has to change the strings by hand, so that's why their punctuation and capitalization is all hokey. We weren't being internally consistent either, so I just decided to change them all to match the text displayed in the game rather than try to enforce actual grammar rules. They'll be trivial to update now. Anyway, if I'd been brave enough I'd have just wiped out all the commas myself. To my inner English teacher the errors were like fingernails on a blackboard. You mean that, for instance, "small springy sheet" are actually three properties? I know that, and it caused quite some headache. ;-) One problem was that, for example, a certain item was usable as "small or medium something" but there wasn't a recipe that was limited to either small or medium somethings. So I didn't know whether this item was small or medium. Also, this wiki's possibilities are limited, searching through a database with lists of items and their properties to find those which have all required properties would require stuff like loops and arrays, and wikia doesn't have the necessary plugins installed. Where did you find that xml file, you mentioned? Malacodor (talk) 23:03, December 24, 2013 (UTC) Malacodor, the NS exe has an xml dump of the game's database inside it. I used Notepad++ to dig around after I heard about people modding their game with it. I just made copies of each xml table and iterate through them manually, since I haven't taken time to create schemas or work out a better way to display it. Caerold (talk) 23:30, December 24, 2013 (UTC) Weapon Damage Since weapons only modify the random roll for damage and not have damage themselves, wouldn't listing the particular weapon as "high-damage" somewhat misleading? Players wielding a weapon described as such will expect big damages (influence of standard cRPG) and will be feeling something is wrong when the damage will be minimal. For example: player shoots a shotgun. Random roll gave 0.1. Even with shotgun's modifier of 2.6, that's still = 0.2 (barely a scratch). Kaaven (talk) 01:57, December 24, 2013 (UTC) Players expect high damage from a shotgun anyway. Malacodor (talk) 02:15, December 24, 2013 (UTC) I think posting numbers would be a mistake. I thing posting cutting/blunt damage rankings like "none, minor, medium, high, extreme" would just reinforce the natural perceptions that people have of the weapons and *hopefully* correct a few common misconceptions about things like the multitool. And I really don't know how the game handles these numbers, anyway. Are they additional or multipliers? I haven't had time to work that out from just the xml I'm reading. Fortunately they can be used to compare weapons on a level playing field, which is all we wanted to do anyway. Caerold (talk) 02:51, December 24, 2013 (UTC) Okay, here's a first run at a damage rating for the main weapons in the game. I'll also give them a letter rating for overall effectiveness. Caerold (talk) 08:06, December 24, 2013 (UTC) Attack cuts bruising rank ---------- --------- --------- ----- shotgun massive massive S rifle extreme extreme A Merga grasp massive minimal A both pistols heavy minimal B slung stone minor massive B broadhead arrows heavy moderate B all spears heavy moderate B monkey wrench massive B dogman claw extreme minor B meat cleaver extreme B piercing arrows heavy minor C crowbar extreme C large stick minor heavy C stone smash minor heavy C stick minor moderate D rifle butt heavy D metal sauce pan heavy D pistol whip minor heavy D glass bottle minor moderate D thrown stone moderate D punch moderate D slung pebble moderate D broken bottle moderate minor F thrown pebble minimal F multitool blade moderate F glass shiv moderate F shard moderate F Isn't there any difference between glass shiv, shard and broken bottle regarding cutting damage? I miss sharpened/hardened spear and revolver. For me it isn't clear whether "light" is better than "minor" and whether "massive" is better than "extreme". Maybe using "minimal" and "maximal" for the lowest and highest damages? Malacodor (talk) 15:23, December 24, 2013 (UTC) Those three all have the same values, actually, although multitool has a piercing bonus. Seriously, they do less than punch damage. The only advantage is that they do bleeding damage and they're a lot scarier than unarmed. If they're the best you have and your opponent won't run, just switch to bare hands before engaging in melee. Yeah, the other two spears do *slightly* less cutting damage (and sharpened gets no piercing modifier, not that I know what that does). I had listed all three together as "spears" but then adjusted broad spear up slightly in my list before publishing. I guess I forgot to add back in the other two. This table is just meant to be a basic guide for our discussion. I'll properly update all the individual infoboxes once we're agreed. Both pistols have identical damage when using the same ammo. They are direct copies of each other. The damage type distribution for guns really depends on the ammo used (all FMJ does way more cutting, less bruising), but the average total damage is the same for both types of ammo for each gun. I wasn't sure we wanted to get into something like ammo differences on the page for each weapon, so I just ballparked it. Minor, Moderate, Major is pretty simple and easily understood. However just those wouldn't let me show much of the gradiation between the weapons in the middle range. Minimal is a good substitute for light, but I hate the word "maximal" more than is probably healthy. I really just need a better pair of words to use to differentiate between a great weapon like the rifle and a better weapon... because the damage the shogun does is seriously nasty. Like 30% better than the 2nd best weapon, the rifle. Maybe I should just call it "fatal"? j/k Caerold (talk) 15:56, December 24, 2013 (UTC) Caerold, this is how, more or less, the damage routine goes (as far as I understand, there may be / probably are more factors involved): A random body part is chosen. A random number is generated between 0.1 and 1.6 (I think) for each damage type the weapon causes (cut / bruise). Each one is then multipied by whatever modifier the skills give. Then it is multiplied by the weapon damage modifier. Then each is multiplied by penalty of enemy toughnes (if any). The resulting number (or numbers if weapon causes 2 kinds of damage) is applied. I don't know if any range multipliers are there as well, though... There are tresholds to the wound severity - if I remember correctly anything over the number of 1 to the upper torso or head means Bleeding to the Lungs or Traumatic Brain Damage death respectively. Deadly bruising damage to the limbs causes Crippling instead. Attacking an enemy who is Fallen, player never aims for limbs. (some damage multipier probably applies as well). If two damages were high enough (close to kill but not kill yet - medium cut+medium bruising) the victim is also Stunned. Plus there are secondary damages - bleeding, removing arrows, moving with arrow still in - that I have no idea how they work. ---- Also, I leave it to you guys to decide on publishing of this damage table (since you're the ones dealing with infoboxes) , but just for the record, I don't like really like it. Not trying to undermine your work here, it just seems... more confusing than useful, taking into consideration how many factors go into determining the end damage output of each attack. At lest untill the complete process of determinig the damage is 100% known and published as well. Kaaven (talk) 18:14, December 24, 2013 (UTC) We could list the damage as "maximum damage" or "damage potential" to indicate that not every hit inflicts full damage. Malacodor (talk) 23:02, December 24, 2013 (UTC) Kaaven, I'd just like the wiki to contain some indication that weapon A is better than weapon B. This is something veteran NS players know through experience but new players sometimes struggle with (see all the confusion with multitool). A simple rating would be useful, I think. "Damage potential" is pretty close to what I was thinking of calling it -- "Damage" is far too simple/misleading, I agree. Thank you for the damage determination overview. I suspected something like that, but I would still need more information on the wound system before I'd ever consider trying to assign numbers. I'm not claiming to publish final results, just a comparison of each weapon's strengths. Caerold (talk) 23:30, December 24, 2013 (UTC) I agree, damage potential is way more explanatory and less "definite". So, if we need to have a damage indicator of some sort, maybe something as simple as this would do: We take the higher of the damage modifiers (if two) and, going acording with this table you've found, assign the Damage Potential (example of course): *0.4 - 0.6 - Very low *0.7 - 0.8 - Low *0.9 - 1.2 - Medium *1.3 - 1.5 - High *1.6+ - Very high While it probably won't help with the "fists vs. multitool" dilema, it should help noobs get the general feel of the weapons, just as you intended. Similar thing can be done with morale effect, if it is given in such a numerical fashion as well. Kaaven (talk) 00:48, December 25, 2013 (UTC) You've just described exactly how I spent 2 hours last night and got the table I posted. I decided to retain the difference between the two damage types, though, and tacked on an overall rating at the end. If I just took the higher potential I'd be under-representing weapons that do multiple damage types. The wrench would be a better weapon than the rifle, for example. While total modifiers rage between 0.4 and 2.6, the reality is that almost everything fits between .8 and 1.4 on that scale. I spent a lot of effort getting a good scale to rank everything. Caerold (talk) 01:05, December 25, 2013 (UTC) Please check the infobox of the .45 Pistol, what do you think? Also, do you think "Maximum Distance" is a good heading for range/reach, or would "Effective Range" be better, or something else? Malacodor (talk) 20:29, December 26, 2013 (UTC) I grouped range/reach together with the damage now. Malacodor (talk) 20:50, December 26, 2013 (UTC) As for heading titles I think Maximum Range would be best, as weapon effectiveness may actually vary at different ranges, but when grouped with damage it's a moot point. Range/Reach for Ranged/Melee is good enough. While I like the idea of a visual signature to help compare weapon damage, there's a serious problem with the way it's currently displayed in a bar with discreet increments. It's much too close to displaying numbers without actually displaying the *right* numbers. According to the .45's page the damage from ranged firing and melee bashing with the pistol is about equal. However the descriptors "Heavy, minor, etc" I used were only intended to give a rough idea of the damage potential. In reality there's a large discrepancy in total damage between the two modes (1.4 to 0.8) as shown in the ABCDF ranking in my table. Cutting and bruising damage are not equal potentials! Comparing them side by side may be a bad idea after all. Instead we should display a single icon to indicate total damage and add description to the text to deliniate damage type. How's that suit you? I love the .pngs you uploaded, by the way. They're perfect for this sort of thing once we fix the misleading display issue. Caerold (talk) 00:28, December 27, 2013 (UTC) I like it. However, I removed the word "cut", it doesn't sound good in the context of gunshot wounds. Malacodor (talk) 01:28, December 27, 2013 (UTC) Do you prefer words (minor, moderate, heavy, ...) or letters in the template? Malacodor (talk) 01:38, December 27, 2013 (UTC) Either is fine with me. Use whichever you feel is more natural to a new editor. Perhaps even numbers. Caerold (talk) 03:33, December 27, 2013 (UTC) Okay, then I leave it as it is. Could you please explain how you calculated the damage ratings? Malacodor (talk) 15:21, December 27, 2013 (UTC) I basically did what Kaaven mentions above. There are values for each attack in the game (including for each weapon mode/ammo) from 0 to 1.6 for cutting and 0 to 1.4 for bruising. I set all the weapons in order in 3 lists: cutting, bruising and total damage potential (added first two values). I then used my judgement to divide said list into various categories (think bell curve) and assigned each a descriptor. I use the descriptor for total damage potential in the new infoboxes and the descriptors for individual damage types in the text explanation of how the weapon does damage. Simple enough? Caerold (talk) 20:45, December 27, 2013 (UTC) Since people started to count the notches of the damage bars, I changed them a bit. Does it look okay? Malacodor (talk) 00:57, December 29, 2013 (UTC) Yeah, that's what I was worried about. I'm fine with the new graphics, as they seem to make it clearer we're talking a general idea of potential rather than actual concrete numbers. I am curious who's been watching so closely that they'd start taking a new graphic so seriously. Where did you see that? I guess I really need to finish the other weapon pages if the info is somehow in demand?Caerold (talk) 03:34, December 29, 2013 (UTC) Fenriswulf http://bluebottlegames.com/main/node/1541#comment-9605 Malacodor (talk) 14:27, December 31, 2013 (UTC) Guns & Bullets Shouldn't we be listing Damage Potential for ammo, since it is where damage comes from, and not for guns? Guns should only have a melee potential. Kaaven (talk) 23:39, December 28, 2013 (UTC) Why do we have separate pages for ammo at all? I modified the box on .45 Pistol a bit to show how it could look like. Malacodor (talk) 01:08, December 29, 2013 (UTC) Actually, I disagree entirely. Weapons do not have damage potential OR range. Neither do types of ammo. Only Attacks have these. An Attack is actually a seperate entity in the game's database. A weapon like the .45 actually provides access to three different Attacks. One for each type of ammo and one for melee. Ammo by itself can also provide access to Attacks, like the ability to melee with an arrow. It seems unlikely due to D's self-imposed deadlines on development, but we may still see additional weapons in the future. Those may well use the same ammo but grant access to different Attacks. We already have a case of that with the same ammo being used for both bows. How would you assign damage/range to ammo used in two different weapons? My feeling is, for the sake of future extensibility, we maintain both ammo pages and weapon pages. The weapon pages should detail the attacks available from the weapon. The ammo pages can further detail properties of the ammo that don't really belong on a weapon page, like gunpowder from bullets starting fires or arrows having a melee attack. Caerold (talk) 03:30, December 29, 2013 (UTC) OK, since it works that way, it is good as it is now. Kaaven (talk) 11:29, December 29, 2013 (UTC) Property items I had to expand the number of items that can be shown per property from 20 to 25. Tell me if you need more. Malacodor (talk) 15:48, December 30, 2013 (UTC) Oh, I didn't even realize I'd hit a limit. No, I've added every possible item to every property now. The only exceptions are bugs where an ingredient specifies "small or medium" but D only excluded "large" but forgot about "very large" items. I left those off since I expect they'll be fixed soon. That's good, I also think that it doesn't make much sense to include soon to be fixed bugs. Malacodor (talk) 14:22, December 31, 2013 (UTC)